"Paul Kearney - Monarchies of God 4 - The Second Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kearney Paul)

and he blotted it hurriedly. The cabin was sloshing ankle-deep, as was every other compartment in the
ship. They had all forgotten long ago what it was like to be dry or have a full belly; several of them had
loose and rotting teeth and scars which had healed ten years before were oozing: the symptoms of
scurvy.

How had it come to this? What had so wrecked their proud and well-manned little flotilla? But he knew
the answer, of course, knew it only too well. It kept him awake through the graveyard watch though his
exhausted body craved oblivion. It growled and roared in the hold of his poor Osprey. It raved in the
midnight spasms of MuradтАЩs nightmares.
He stoppered up the inkwell and folded the log away in its layers of oilskin. On the table before him was
a flaccid wineskin which he slung around his neck. Then he sloshed and staggered across the pitching
cabin to the door in the far bulkhead and stepped over the storm-sill into the companion-way beyond. It
was dark here, as it was throughout every compartment in the ship. They had few candles left and only a
precious pint or two of oil for the storm-lanterns. One of these hung swinging on a hook in the
companionway, and Hawkwood took it and made his way forward to where a hatch in the deck led
down into the hold. He hesitated there with the ship pitching and groaning around him and the seawater
coursing around his ankles, then cursed aloud and began to work the hatch-cover free. He lifted it off a
yawning hole and gingerly lowered himself down the ladder there, into the blackness below.

At the ladderтАЩs foot he wedged himself into a corner and fumbled for the flint and steel that was
contained in a bottom compartment of the storm-lantern. An aching, maddening time of striking spark
after spark until one caught on the oil-soaked wick of the lantern and he was able to lower the thick glass
that protected it and stand it in a pool of yellow light.

The hold was eerily empty, home only to a dozen casks of rotting salt meat and noisome water that
constituted the last of the crewтАЩs provisions. Water pouring everywhere, and the noise of his poor
tormented Osprey an agonised symphony of creaks and moans, the sea roaring like a beast beyond the
tortured hull. He laid a hand against the timbres of the ship and felt them work apart as she laboured in
the gale-driven waves. Fragments of oakum floated about in the water around his feet. The seams were
opening. No wonder the men on the pumps could make no headway. The ship was dying.

From below his feet there came an animal howl which rivalled even the thundering bellow of the wind.
Hawkwood flinched, and then stumbled forward to where another hatch led below to the bottom-most
compartment of the ship, the bilge.

It was stinking down here. The OspreyтАЩs ballast had not been changed in a long time and the tropical
heat of the Western Continent seemed to have lent it a particularly foul stench. But it was not the ballast
alone which stank. There was another smell down here. It reminded Hawkwood of the beastsтАЩ enclosure
in a travelling circusтАФthat musk-like reek of a great animal. He paused, his heart hammering within his
ribs, and then made himself walk forward, crouching low under the beams, the lantern swinging in a
chaotic tumble of light and dark and sloshing liquid. The water was over his knees already.

Something ahead, moving in the liquid filth of the bilge. The rattle of metal clinking upon metal. It saw him
and ceased its struggles. Two yellow eyes gleamed in the dark. Hawkwood halted a scant two yards
from where it lay chained to the very keelson of the carrack.

The beast blinked, and then, terrible out of that animal muzzle, came recognizable speech.

тАЬCaptain. How good of you to come.тАЭ